


Mama We All Go to Hell

by avada_matata



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: im sorry, this is not a happy story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 12:43:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12771342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avada_matata/pseuds/avada_matata
Summary: Shaak Ti spends her free time on Kamino with some clone cadets; that's where she is when Order 66 happens.





	Mama We All Go to Hell

Never let it be said that Shaak Ti did not care for her clones. Yes, she knew she was skirting the ‘no attachment’ rule, but she could not help it.

She sat meditating now, in her chambers on Kamino. She had been here since the Battle of Geonosis, acting as the Jedi ambassador to the Kaminoans, overseeing the creation of the Grand Army of the Republic. 

Save for the first batch of clones, Shaak had seen them grow from fetuses to young adolescents to battle-ready warriors. It broke her heart. 

They grew so fast, too fast. Languages and skills and data jammed into their heads from conception, thanks to the brilliant minded Kaminoan scientists. Brilliant minded, but cold hearted. Shaak knew they viewed the clones as an entity, a project, not individual sentients. She also knew that this view was shared by some of her fellow Jedi. 

More than anything, that perplexed her. Were her peers so dull in the Force that they could not sense the spark, the uniqueness, the personality behind every clone? No wonder they were so blind to whatever Sith menace pervaded this galaxy!

There were more clones here than Shaak could count, but she felt them all, a warm and fierce presence in the Force. 

Shaak slipped out of meditation and rose to her feet. She exited her chamber, moving through the halls of the facility towards the clone barracks. 

Back when Shaak had been a Padawan, she was often assigned crèche duty, a task she had always enjoyed while the other Padawans groaned. Perhaps, in a way, that prepared her for her service on Kamino. Generally, overseeing the clones was not much different. Though they look and act older, most clones are around the age of the average Padawan, if not younger. 

In fact, a lot of them were younger. Shaak strode past the nursery, where hundreds of tiny, pudgy-faced clones either napped or romped around with their future squad mates. In only a short amount of time, Shaak would see them shipped off to the war, where most would not return. 

She kept walking, despising the dark turn of her thoughts, but mostly the truth in them. _Force, they're only children._

Her feet took her to the Junior Cadets’ quarters, where clones of about four standard years resided. 

When she entered their common area, all chatter halted, and the forty or so cadets in the room snapped to a salute. “Master Jedi, Sir!”

“At ease, Cadets,” Shaak said, bowing her horned head. 

At her command, they relaxed, and then began to pepper her with questions, as per her usual visits. 

“Who’s winning the war?” asked a cadet named Chip. 

“We are, ya dummy!” his buddy Mak replied.

“Are we gonna get to fight before it's over?” another clone named Hatcher asked.

On her left, a cadet named Tooka asked, “What’s gonna happen to us after the war?”

“Where do your stripes come from?” Of course, that was Hari. 

Shaak reveled in her time spent with the Junior Cadets: they were young enough to lack the fear of asking when they did not understand and old enough to come up with good, sometimes tricky questions. This was the closest she could come to relaxing throughout the entire war. 

She answered each question at length, and with honesty that the children (because really, that is what they are) deserved. She remembered their Names; those were so much more important than their numbers. 

Innocent brown eyes gazed up at her as they all settled on the floor to hear her talk. 

“My stripes are to me as your hair is to you, little one. When I was younger, I did not have as many as I do now.” She gave Hari a little pat on the head; he giggled. 

Tooka was poking her gently; she looked at him expectantly. “You have twenty-eight stripes,” he said. 

“Thank you, Tooka,” Shaak said, even though she already knew this. “At the moment, we are winning the war,” she said, addressing them all. “Count Dooku was recently killed in action; I believe the end of the war will follow shortly.”

Gasps of surprise followed the news; Hatcher’s eyes widened like big brown saucers, Chip and Mak high-fived. A handful of cadets in the back of the room cheered and pumped their fists. 

“Yeah! I knew we’d get him!” Mak said. 

“Grevious is next!” Chip whooped. “Let’s kick him in his metal-”

“Chip,” Shaak said warningly. He grinned, sheepish. 

Tooka looked a bit less than overjoyed. “What happens if we don't get to fight? What're we gonna do?”

Shaak paused for a moment, uncertain. How would billions of clones, manufactured for war, handle slow motion of peacetime? Clones have always been an adaptable bunch; Shaak was certain they would find a way to make it, but this was a question many other (less favorably-inclined towards clones) sentients would be asking. 

The Cadets were staring at her, and Shaak was now the sole focus of about forty pairs of round eyes. 

She took a deep breath, not wanting to mess this up. “Well, there’s going to be a lot of clean up afterwards. Not every planet will get the memo to stop fighting immediately after the Senate drafts the treaty. Some won't want to stop fighting. That's where you'll come in.”

Some cadets were nodding in agreement, but others didn't look so pleased. 

“But that can't last forever, can it?” Hari asked. 

Shaak paused again, searching for the right words. “Hmm...even in peacetime, Jedi still learn to fight, and we still carry our weapons. We are still peacemakers throughout the galaxy. I know many Jedi would agree with me in saying that you, as clones and as people, will still have a place at our side.”

“So, you mean we'll be like Jedi?” asked Tooka. 

Shaak couldn't find a flaw in that argument. “That would be fine by me.”

The Cadets were positively _overjoyed_ at that. 

“We're gonna be like Jedi!” they chanted. 

“We're gonna be like Jedi!”

“We're gonna be like Jedi!”

Then it stopped. 

The Cadets were totally silent, as if on cue. 

At once, they turned their heads towards Shaak, eyes suddenly blank and lifeless. 

Shaak’s senses were on alert; their combined Force presence had gone suddenly and alarmingly dim. Only one overarching intent existed: _kill._

In unison, they spoke in a monotone voice: “Good soldiers follow orders.”

_No!_

From her position on the floor, Shaak scrambled backwards away from the clone younglings, standing alert to the unfolding horror. She started to reach for her lightsaber, but halted. _Fool!_ she thought, _They're still children!_

She reached into the Force; in that second, Shaak doubled over in sudden, gut-wrenching pain. She clutched at her chest as the Force screamed the death of thousands at once, violently ripping souls from bodies, seething with Darkness. 

_Dear Force, what’s happening?_

Panting, Shaak straightened up, but the mass of clone cadets surged towards her. A handful of clones -- Hari, Hatcher, and Tooka -- managed to grab her ankles, but she extracted them with what she intended as a strong but overall harmless Force push. 

Instead, her mind recoiled from the slippery Darkness of the Force, resulting in a weak thrust that barely broke the cadets’ contact. 

As soon as they were gone, Chip and Mak took their places, using small fists and strong punches to carry out their attack. Shaak Pushed them away, and another wave of cadets was upon her; this time four had successfully grabbed her ankles, clawing at the leather of her boots. She kicked them away, trying not to inflict much damage. 

The clones were quiet as they fought her, not the usual screaming and shouts heard during drills. The contrast was stark, and it unnerved Shaak to her core. 

“Cadets, snap out of it!” she yelled; she refused to raise her lightsaber against these children -- _her_ children. Whatever this is was not their doing, she could not punish them by taking their lives. 

They continued to grab at her, snagging her robes, trying to secure her to the spot. Shaak kept pushing them away, with ever-weakening Force shoves as well as physically threw them off, searching for the door. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw it open, and more cadets poured in, the same blank expression on their faces. 

Shaak felt a spike of pain as two cadets yanked her back lek, causing her head to whip backwards. She groaned and Force-pushed them away. A weight landed heavy on her back and she staggered, flipping around and throwing a handful of cadets from her body. The others continued to pull and claw at her limbs, her lekku, shredding her robes. Shaak pressed the fight, but every time she would remove one clone, two more would take his place. She glimpsed Tooka in her peripheral, pulling and straining at her left lek where before he had been counting the stripes. 

Imaginary pressure built its home in her head, result of what she could only assume was a brutal massacre marching across the galaxy, sowing terror and pain wherever it crossed. 

She reached into the Force, wanting to gather it and expel the clones from her person. Instead she doubled over in pain as she felt again the overwhelming stench of death in its presence. While she had been skimming the vast field of energy for more raw power, the Force had obeyed; now that she was digging deeper, it was howling, projecting the death of thousands directly in her mind.

She couldn't help it: she screamed. 

That moment of weakness allowed the clone cadets to finally bring her down, pinning her to the floor with the strength of an akul. 

She writhed and fought, looking each clone in their blank, unforgiving eyes. “Cadets, let me go, _this isn't you!”_

Shaak’s struggling came to a pause as she saw Hari remove something, a long, metallic cylinder, from her belt. 

_No. Not Hari._

And Hari stood over her, lightsaber in hand. He never broke eye contact with her as the blade hissed to life in an electric blue flame. 

“Hari, no, snap out of it,” Shaak pleaded. “Come back!”

Hari held the blade point-down over her chest. He jammed it through her ribs, and Shaak let out a gasp of pain as her vision blurred around the edges. 

A scalding fire blossomed from her chest throughout her entire body, bringing with it the sensation of death. None of the cadets were dying though, just herself, and that thought was nearly enough.

The last thing Shaak saw were Hari’s cold, unfeeling eyes as the blackness swallowed her whole.

**Author's Note:**

> i am so sorry for this. i just couldnt get this awful thought out of my head. all the little clones during order 66, like it affected them too didnt it?
> 
> ((sue me if you recognize the fic title i couldnt think of anything better/more accurate))


End file.
